In From the Rain
by shadowcrawler05
Summary: Helen finds a late night visitor on the Girardi's front porch.


Summary: Helen finds a late night visitor on the Girardi's front porch.

Spoilers: Takes place between The Gift and Silence.

Disclaimer: I don't own JoA or the characters or the actors' souls or anything. I do, however, own 1/3 of the rights to a couple of crazy elves beating the crap out of Santa in a laundry mat.

A/N: In all my stuff, I use my own theories for certain character background info, you know, since the show hasn't really given us a whole lot. Sorry if it seems a little OOC, did the best I could given the situation. These are two characters that I would _love _to see interact more on the show, especially a scene with just the two of them. So I, you know, wrote one…

----

****

In From the Rain

---

The rain slammed against the ground as she sat on the front porch. The sheets of water were so thick, she could barely see across the street. It was dark; the only light around was the refracted glow of the street lamp as it shined through the downpour. There were the occasional flashes of lightning, but they were so brief she didn't really count them. She figured she'd been sitting out there for an hour, maybe more. She would have checked her watch, but she wasn't sure what time she'd left her own house that night, so it wouldn't have done much good. She couldn't remember why she'd left, just that she was pissed off about something and needed to think. Well, she was always pissed off about something, but that night it was different. It was something she didn't understand, something she didn't recognize. So she took off as quickly as she could and somehow wound up where she was. She had no idea why her feet had taken her there, just that they had and now the monsoon had her trapped on the front porch of 2320 Euclid Avenue.

She pulled the zipper up on her jacket and shoved her hands in her pockets as she felt the temperature drop another degree or two. She'd debated on whether or not to knock on the door and, perhaps, warrant an invite inside, but since it was around two in the morning, she figured it best not to. Of course, she also figured that a cop probably wouldn't be too thrilled to find a leather jacket clad punk sitting on his front porch at two in the morning either. Especially one that looked like a drowned rat. She leaned her head back against the tall window by the door and stared up at the wooden awning that draped over the porch. In the past several months, she had come to know that house, and most of its occupants, quite well. Better than she'd intended to, actually. From the first time she'd been there for an AP Chem assignment, she'd assumed that was all it would be. Work and nothing more. She'd hoped that was all it would be. She didn't like people. For thirteen years it was just her and Rove, and that was how she'd intended for it to stay.

Then the Girardi's moved in. There was something about that family that drew her and Rove both to them. Mr. Girardi was a cop, the former Chief of Police, which made her find her constant presence there all the more bewildering. She hated authority, always had, and a cop along with a member of the high school faculty under one roof was way too much despotism for her to handle. And Joan? Joan was…well, Joan. For some reason, beyond her comprehension, Joan seemed to have an overwhelming amount of faith in her and Adam. Even after their very first Chem assignment, when Joan had come to her to hand it in (which she never did; it wasn't her thing), she'd told her to have pride, to stop wasting her potential. She didn't even know she had potential. What disturbed her more than that though, was how close to two had become over the course of just a few months. Especially considering the only other person besides Rove she'd allowed even remotely past her defenses was…well, no one. Then again, she liked to think Joan still didn't know much about her, which was true for the most part. Her own life was a subject they'd pretty much managed to avoid. She was just the one Joan had come to for advice on dealing with Adam. At first, she was uncomfortable, to say the least, but as she grew more worried about him, she happily complied. Well, maybe not happily. But she complied. She told herself that at least it had turned out for the better. Rove was with Joan now, and she'd seen him smile genuinely for the first time in at least three years. She had to give Joan some credit for that.

Then there was the geek. For some unfathomable reason, she'd worked with him on the science fair building a rail gun which, surprisingly, worked...sort of, and smashed right through Friedman's project, giving her much more pleasure than it probably should have. She still remembered the day he'd asked her to do that stupid thing. He was so bumbling and nervous that if she were any other girl, she probably would've thought it was cute. She had no idea why she had agreed to do it. Atom Boy didn't exactly need any help. Rove had told her he thought Luke was just looking for an excuse to spend time with her, and she'd agreed for the same reason. She objected, saying that was completely absurd. Of course, Rove had to play the eidetic memory card and tell her about how she smiled and fidgeted with her headphones as she watched Luke walk away. It was strange, having only one friend, just one person that wanted to at least try and understand you, for years and then, all of a sudden, someone else is knocking at the door wanting you to let them in. In the brief time they'd worked on the project, she found that she had actually enjoyed herself, and Luke's company, not that she'd ever admit to it. After the science fair, he had finally backed off for awhile, until he gave her that stupid rock. In one simple gesture, the guy she thought she didn't give a rat's ass about had managed to slightly embarrass, confuse, and touch her, which, of course, scared the hell out of her. But she didn't want to think about it. Not then.

There was always Kevin, who she'd seen as the most normal of them all. While he wasn't exactly 'normal', he was certainly a lot less strange than the other Girardi offspring. A cop, a teacher, a former athlete turned reporter, a flake, and a geek. They were quite possibly the most unorthodox family she'd ever met, and five types of people she never imagined she'd ever socialize with. Yet, she felt more comfortable on their front porch in a thunderstorm at two a.m. than inside her own home.

She was stolen from her thoughts by the sound of a latch unhooking behind her. She stood quickly and turned to see a silhouette standing behind the curtains in the window. As the door creaked open, she took a step back, allowing the silhouetted figure to fully reveal themselves. "Mrs. Girardi…you're awake." She was surprised, and at the same time, relieved, to see that it wasn't the cop.

Helen stood silent for a moment, taking in the sight of a drenched Grace Polk standing in front of the door in the middle of the night. "Grace? What are you doing on our front porch at two o'clock in the morning on a school night?"

"Getting some fresh air," she shrugged, avoiding any and all unnecessary eye contact.

"In the middle of a storm?"

"Sure. Nice breeze."

Helen smiled to herself. "Well, get in here before you _get _something else."

"Don't worry about it. I'm fine. I was just…"

"In," Helen replied a little more forcefully this time. She grabbed Grace's shoulder and practically pushed her inside the house and closed the door behind them. Grace looked around the room, obviously uncomfortable. There was something very unsettling about being alone with your friends' parents, especially in the middle of the night. Helen began to walk to the kitchen. "How about something to warm you up a little?"

"Nah, I'm good."

"Too bad," Helen grinned. "You're getting a glass of warm milk anyway. Come on."

Grace hesitated a moment before following Mrs. Girardi into the kitchen. She leaned against the wall just inside the doorway. "You know, you really don't have…"

"Like I'm going to let my daughter's best friend get the flu because I left her outside in the middle of a thunderstorm," Helen interrupted, with a slight laugh. As she put the two glasses of milk in the microwave, she noticed Grace was still standing against the wall and playing nervously with the zipper on the sleeve of her jacket. Nervousness was definitely not a side of her that Helen had ever seen before. "You know," she said softly, "you don't have to stand. You can sit down."

"Huh?" Grace looked up. "Oh…right." She slowly walked over and took the seat at the table where she usually sat during their study sessions.

"So," Helen began, as she walked over to the table and handed one of the glasses to Grace before sitting down across from her, "how long were you out there?"

Grace shrugged as she took the glass and sat it down in front of her. "About an hour, I guess. Something like that."

Helen sighed. "You could have knocked, you know."

"Didn't want to wake anyone."

"There's always someone awake here. Insomnia runs in the family," Helen smiled. Grace offered a polite smirk as she took a drink of the warm milk. Her expression soon changed to something similar to that of one, Helen figured, she must have had when she saw Joan trying out to be a cheerleader.

"Oh, G-d." Grace stared at the glass in disgust. "This is really…"

"Gross?" Helen offered, with a small laugh.

Grace nodded. "Yeah."

"It may not be too pleasing in the taste department," Helen smiled as she took a drink from her own glass, "but it's effective."

"Yeah, well," Grace sat the glass down and pushed it away from her, "I'm gonna have to pass on efficiency this time around."

Helen laughed; she'd always liked Grace. She still sometimes found herself laughing about the first day of school in the main office, when Grace realized she was new and welcomed her to the 'fascist bureaucracy that is Arcadia High.' By the end of the first week, she'd seen Grace in the office so many times, she already knew her by name. She was late for school everyday, late for every class, getting sent there all the time for smart-mouthing a teacher, most of the time proving them wrong in their own subject. By the third week, Mr. Price had already threatened to expel her, but Helen always reminded him about what her records show on her standardized test scores and how foolish he'd look for expelling one of his highest scoring students. She saw how much potential Grace had and even if the entire faculty was ready to give up that kid, she wasn't about to.

She was actually rather thrilled when she learned Grace was in Joan's chemistry group. She figured perhaps the two of them could learn from each other. Besides, Joan needed friends, true friends, and Grace looked like she could use one, herself. The more she'd seen Grace outside of the school, the more she liked her. She was definitely different, definitely unique. Not to mention never afraid to cause trouble if the situation called for it, and often even when it didn't. But there was something else there, something most people didn't know to look for. A human being. She truly was a good person, no matter how hard she tried to make people think otherwise. She had a mind which, unlike a lot of teenage girls, she wasn't afraid to actually use. She figured that was probably why her youngest son was so fond of her.

"So," Helen began when she noticed Grace looked more than a little uncomfortable in the silence, "how have you been?"

"Oh, just peachy," Grace quipped.

"Well, that's good," Helen said, ignoring Grace's obvious sarcasm. "I haven't seen you around here too much lately."

"Yeah well, Girardi and Rove are always off playing tonsil hockey, which is _definitely _not meant to be a spectator sport, so…" She didn't finish her thought, but she was pretty sure Mrs. Girardi knew what she would have said. She looked down at the table when she saw a hint of sympathy appear in Mrs. Girardi's eyes. She hated it when people felt sorry for her, and she hated it even more when she knew they did. It made her feel vulnerable, to put herself into a position where she invoked other people's sympathy. She hated that too.

"Don't worry, Grace," Helen spoke with a very motherly tone. "I know it can get kind of weird when your friends start dating each other." Grace continued to stare at the table, playing with her watchband and pretending not to pay any attention. "You're feeling left out, alone, because of this new bond they've formed. But that doesn't mean they've forgotten you, and it certainly doesn't mean they care any less about you than they did a month ago."

"Hey, I prefer it when they keep the groping private, so if that means spending a little more quality time with myself, then…whatever." That was all Grace could manage to say as Mrs. Girardi gave her a look she was pretty sure only mothers could give. It was a look she hadn't seen in six years. That look that said they knew there was more going on, but you weren't telling them, and if you didn't say it out loud they would just read your mind to find out what was wrong with you, even if you verbally insisted nothing was. The sympathetic look was back in Mrs. Girardi's eyes, if it had ever even left. Grace looked away again. What was it about this stupid family making her actually emote? She'd spent practically her entire life building walls to protect herself from this sort of thing, and one stupid family managed to bring the wrecking ball to her perfect architecture.

Helen offered a light smile. "You probably feel like they abandoned you for each other, and that's a perfectly normal thing for someone in your pos…"

"Don't worry about it," Grace interrupted. Girardi and Rove's love life was the last thing on her list of priority discussion.

"Okay. It's just, you're at that age when you start to discover the world isn't exactly what you thought it was, or maybe you aren't exactly the person you thought you would be."

"Look, I'm…"

"It's alright if you're lonely," Helen continued as if Grace hadn't said a word. "You're a teenager. You have all of these emotions, feelings, and they're there even if you don't want to look at them."

"I said don't worry about it," Grace's voice grew more annoyed.

"I'm just saying that it's only natural for you to…"

"You're not my mother!" Grace shouted, pushing her chair back as she stood. "Stop trying to be!" She immediately regretted letting those words get out. Mrs. Girardi was the nicest person she knew. She had shown her nothing but concern since she found her sitting out in the rain, and there she was, yelling at her like she'd done something wrong. If she were the woman across the table, she would have been pissed off, but to her surprise, Mrs. Girardi didn't look angry at all. She looked a little hurt, but not the least bit surprised or upset. "Look…" Grace said after a moment. "I…um…" She looked down at the floor as she searched for the right words to say, but was unable to find them. It just wasn't in her to apologize more than once a decade.

"It's alright," Helen said quietly, her expression unchanged.

"No…it's not." Grace slowly sat back down and folded her arms across the table. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mrs. Girardi raise a questioning eyebrow as she stared down at the table. The room was completely silent for several seconds before Grace decided, hesitantly, to speak again. "I shouldn't have said that stuff."

"It's okay," Helen kept her voice low. "You were right. I'm not your mother."

"No." Grace kept her eyes focused on a loose thread on the placemat. "You actually care."

Helen's gaze shifted from a slight hurt to one of a slight unease. "I'm sorry?"

Grace's eyes remained on the green string in front of her. "My mother couldn't care less about me."

Helen's tone then transformed from one of pain to one of concern, as she focused her gaze on the girl across the table. "I'm sure that's not true."

"Yeah? Then how come she hasn't spoken to me in six years?" Grace slammed her fist into the table. Her voice cracked with a mixture of anger, resentment, and years of unshed tears.

Helen remained silent and focused attentively on Grace's expression as it shifted through about twenty different emotions in the course of a second. She watched as Grace carefully blinked back the tears that had started to form in her eyes, refusing to let them fall. She wished there was something she could tell her, something she could say that would show her everything would be alright, something she could do to at least try to comfort her. She had, after all, been a mother for nineteen years and her instincts told her that the kid across the table needed someone then. Helen did the only thing she could think of, and reached across the table and put a gentle hand on Grace's arm. Her motherly tone was back, and she chose her words very carefully. "Maybe she's afraid. Maybe she feels guilty."

"Maybe she just wants to forget about me." Grace pulled her arm away. There was that pity she hated. Even if Mrs. Girardi was only trying to help, Grace still hated it.

"How do you know that's true?"

"How do you know it's not?! She never even told us why she left! All she did was leave some stupid papers on the counter for my father to sign with a note that said we weren't enough for her." Behind the rage, Grace's eyes once again began to cloud, and she was forced to use every ounce of her willpower to keep any tears from being shed. Crying was something she just didn't do. Mrs. Girardi carefully placed her hand back on Grace's arm. That time, she didn't pull away.

Helen hesitated before she spoke again. "I'm sure she has her reasons. Some people jump into lives they know they aren't ready for. Some people can't handle the responsibility…"

"Or they don't want it," Grace interrupted, her voice, for once, more hurt than angry. She looked down at Mrs. Girardi's hand resting on her arm. She wanted to pull away, she really did. She hated any sort of physical contact, but for some reason, it actually felt kind of nice. Not in a creepy, backwards Mrs. Robinson sort of way, but it truly made her feel a little bit better. Like maybe the entire world wasn't out to get her for once.

"Grace," Helen said after a moment, "you have to trust me when I tell that everything will eventually be alright. That everything that's happened in your life, all this pain, it will go away. Right now, you feel like your mother abandoned you, and maybe she did, but she shouldn't be what you focus on. You're paying so much attention to what you don't have that you're missing out on what you do." Grace straightened her posture a bit, showing that she was paying attention. "Regardless of what you might think, there are people who care about you, who love you."

"Yeah, sure." Grace's tone of voice showed that she wanted to believe what Mrs. Girardi was telling her, but she just couldn't. Her own mother didn't want anything to do with her. Was she supposed to believe that anyone else would?

"What about Adam? Or Joan?" Helen paused for a moment, as a smirk formed on her lips. "Or Luke?" Had Helen been looking at any other girl besides Grace Polk at that moment, she would have sworn she'd seen her blush. But that was something Grace just wouldn't do. "He cares about you. In fact, if he weren't my youngest child, I might go so far as to say he maybe even loves you. Just a little bit." She paused for a moment. "Deep like, maybe."

Grace allowed herself to show a small smirk, amused by Mrs. Girardi trying to avoid the fact that her youngest kid was getting older. "Don't sweat it, Mrs. G. Atom Boy doesn't love me," she reassured her. "He just _thinks _he likes me."

"Then why does he look at you like you're the only girl on the planet?"

"Temporary insanity."

Helen smiled. "Temporary insanity? It's that hard for you to accept that he genuinely likes you?"

Grace shook her head. "Guys don't like me, Mrs. Girardi."

"You want to know what I think?"

"No."

"I think you're afraid of letting someone get close to you. You're afraid of being abandoned again. That's why you're so uncomfortable around Joan and Adam, why you won't let Luke near you. You think if it was so easy for your own mother to walk out on you, that it would be even easier for you to lose someone else."

Grace opened her mouth to reply, but soon found that no words were reaching the surface. There were a thousand different things she could have said, and none of them would let themselves leave, because somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew Mrs. Girardi was right. She stayed quiet for a minute, letting everything Mrs. Girardi said sink in. "How did you do that?" she asked, uncharacteristically quiet.

"Do what?" Helen asked with a sigh, relieved that Grace had broken the silence.

Grace looked up from the table, but she still refused to look Mrs. Girardi in the eyes. "Find out all of that crap about me that I don't even know."

Helen smiled, "No matter how much you want me to see you as some sort of emotionless delinquent, you're still just a teenage girl. And contrary to what Joan may tell you, I was one once, too. Besides, I'm a parent. It's my job to know things."

"Ha! Since when?" Grace asked, with a sarcastic laugh.

"Oh, I don't know. Somewhere around the dawn of time."

"Guess my father missed the memo." Grace's voice rang with a bitterness that Helen hadn't heard since the last time Will had spoken about his father. It wasn't the bitterness of abandonment, but more the bitterness of a child who thought their family had given up on them, a child who felt alone.

"You know," Helen began slowly after a few seconds, taking her time and thinking through every word she said, "I'm sure this has been just as hard on your father as it has been on you. You weren't the only person your mother walked out on." Grace remained silent, making sure her eyes never met up with Helen's as she continued to speak. "Imagine how hard this must be for him. He already lost his wife, how do you think it must be for him to feel like he's lost his daughter as well?"

"Like he cares." The anger had returned to Grace's voice as she once again pulled away from Mrs. Girardi. Her father was one person she _never _wanted to talk about. She wanted to kick her own ass for even bringing him up.

"Grace, he's your father. He has to care about you." Helen smiled, hoping to bring her some sort of comfort. "It's a parental obligation, to love their kids no matter what they turn into." For the first time in their entire conversation, Grace looked directly at her. "You may not be exactly what he'd originally hoped for; kids rarely are. _Believe _me, I know. But that doesn't mean he ever stopped trying to understand you. It doesn't mean he ever stopped loving you." Helen swore she caught a glimpse of what could only be sadness and regret in her eyes as Grace downcast her gaze once more. "Maybe you should try talking to him. I'm sure he misses you."

"Oh, yeah. Sure," Grace's voice once again dripped with the angry sarcasm that people had come to know her for. "He misses me like Russia misses the Cossacks."

"He's your father."

"And he gave up on me a long time ago, Mrs. G." Grace pushed her chair back slowly as she stood. "It's about time you did, too."

"Grace…" Helen stood and walked slowly over to where Grace was then standing by the door. She put her hand on Grace's shoulder and looked directly into her eyes. "I am _never _going to give up you." For one brief moment, Helen swore she saw the girl behind the prickly exoskeleton, the girl who wanted nothing more than to just hear someone say those words. Before Helen could say anything more, Grace looked away and the room fell quiet once again.

It seemed like forever before Grace finally broke the silence again. "Rain's stopped," She noted, nodding in the direction of the window before pulling away and turning towards the back door. "Better seize the moment." She shoved one hand in her pocket as she opened the door with the other.

"You know," Helen said gently, "if you ever need to talk…about anything…"

"Oh I won't," Grace interrupted quickly as she walked through the door and closed it behind her.

Helen pulled back the curtain and watched as Grace zipped up her jacket and took off down the sidewalk, disappearing into the night. She didn't know if she would ever take her up on her offer; she probably wouldn't. She figured that by dawn, Grace would have pushed their entire conversation into the back of her mind and pretend like it never happened. Helen had always known that she didn't like to get close to people. That was obvious by the way she always fought with Joan over stupid little things like cheerleading and debate, or the way that she would always push Luke away as soon as he started to break through the surface. Now she knew why. She didn't blame Grace for being afraid, not that she'd ever admit it was fear she felt mixed in with her anger. Still, she couldn't help feeling sorry for her. She was such a good kid at heart, and yet she lived with the idea that the whole world was against her, so she had to be against the world. Helen knew that she could take care of herself; she was a strong girl. But that didn't mean she didn't need someone to be there to promise her that everything would be alright, to tell her she would be okay.

Helen straightened the curtain and walked slowly up the stairs. In just a few hours she would be back at the school checking her mail in the office listening to Mr. Price talking about some troublemaker or another. Most likely the girl she'd just spent the past half hour talking to. He'd say how Grace Polk had no ambition, no future. Marlene would chime in that Grace was just another lost cause. Helen would roll her eyes but say nothing, knowing Grace wouldn't appreciate being defended by a member of the high school hierarchy. But she would know it wasn't true, that all Grace needed was someone to believe in her, just one person to have a little faith. There was so much more to her than most people thought. Most people just took her as they saw her, a rebel without a cause. But Helen took her as she was: a lonely teenage girl. And even if everyone else in the world had given up on that girl, there was no way in hell she ever would.


End file.
